The Global South in Comparative Constitutional Law
This week, the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / Law and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America celebrates its 50th birthday with an international conference on “The Global South in...
View ArticleAbusive comparativism: “Pseudo-comparativist” political discourse as a means...
April 16, 2017 marked a historical turning point in Turkish constitutionalism, as a slim majority of voters (51.41% to be exact, as official numbers provided by the Turkish Supreme Election Council...
View ArticleConstitutional Ping-Pong
Sri Lanka is at a moment of reckoning, with its political class, its public institutions and with its collective identity. No longer can it ignore the causality between state capture through executive...
View ArticleDemocracy Under Total War
Ukraine is engaged in an existential war for survival. One need not accept the full role of the exception from Carl Schmitt to acknowledge that the struggle to withstand a brutal assault on civilians...
View Article“We the Territorial People” and the Russia-Ukraine War
Not enough attention has been devoted to Russia’s demands that Ukraine amend its constitution to recognize Crimea as Russian territory as well as accept the independence of the separatist regions in...
View ArticleRevitalizing the Right to Abortion in Kenya
On 24 March 2022, the Kenya High Court delivered a momentous ruling on the right to abortion. The decision sets a tempo in safeguarding women’s rights not only in Kenya but across the world. It is yet...
View ArticleEvolution vs Revolution
We are all aware of the polarization afflicting modern democratic societies. It has intensified to the point that each camp perceives the “other” as a threat to its values and way of life. This is...
View ArticleBolsonarism at the Ballot Box
If things go badly, the upcoming elections in Brazil may be the last ones for some time to come. Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro threatens to use the Trump playbook to dispute a possible election...
View ArticleConstitutionalism under Bolsonaro
On the eve of a fateful election that will determine whether the last four years have been a bad dream and a footnote in Brazil’s political history, or not, the legacy of Bolsonaro’s regime for...
View ArticleHarder, Better, Faster, Stronger
What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Nietzsche’s popular aphorism encapsulates one possible reading of the consequences of backlash against domestic and international courts: the, perhaps naïve,...
View ArticleLooking at Berlin, Ending up on Capitol Hill
On 3 November 2023, the Italian Council of Ministers approved a constitutional reform bill to introduce the direct election of the Prime Minister in Italy. The reform would grant the Prime Minister...
View ArticleAs Good as It Gets
Contrasting the constitutional limitations on the freedom to establish political parties in Italy and Germany brings out two quite different conceptions of militant democracy: one is particularistic,...
View ArticleBetween Legal Deficiencies and Political Restraint
Traditionally, it is Germany, not France, which is presented as the model example of militant democracy. Among the various provisions of the German Basic Law, Article 21 (2), setting out the procedure...
View ArticleNon-Binary Gender Markers in Italy?
In decision No. 143/2024, published on 23 July 2024, the Italian Constitutional Court recognises the existence of non-binary people for the first time in Italian history. Although the decision as such...
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